


wouldn't want tibia

by safelybeds



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Genocide Route, Illustrated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 02:22:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4986388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/safelybeds/pseuds/safelybeds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's nice to have someone call you out on being lazy, even though nothing could be further from the truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wouldn't want tibia

**Author's Note:**

> Written by mithicast (who is still waiting on her AO3 account) and illustrated by me!

Timelines, knotted and pulsating like diseased flesh. Tangling around each other. Choking and then cancelling themselves out. Sans was aware of it all, and he kept the ugly truth buttoned up behind an enigmatic grin and a harmless personality. It wasn’t even a facade, really. He liked the simple life: bad jokes, a few evenings at the MTT Hotel, greasy food, good company, and as long as he had those things Sans didn’t see the point in taking action. Everything, good or bad, would eventually be undone. It could even be reassuring to think about sometimes. No matter what, he could just chill and let things play out as they would.

Except he’d made a miscalculation this time.

Of course he knew the human was a problem, but he also had... well, he couldn’t exactly call them memories, more like... vague flickers of awareness. Scenarios where the human turned out all right. Of them playing along with his brother, of getting “captured”, of agreeing to the silliest date Sans ever happened to be close enough to overhear. And so, aside from a single warning, Sans tried to be more like Papyrus in his own considerably more laid-back way. He held onto his belief in the human’s fundamental goodness, in their ability to do the right thing. Now, the monsters were paying for it.

Though he wasn’t going to pretend that the price he paid -- was paying -- was anywhere close to his brother’s. Not when calcium-rich dust mixed with snow caked his finger bones and he could feel the nonexistent pit of his stomach drop out with all the sudden, ugly force of too much deja vu. This had happened before, too many times. He’d made this mistake before. The human… the _killer_ … damn it, they had to be stopped before they tore everything apart.

Except he could hold out hope in Papyrus’ buddy, Undyne. She was one tough customer. Probably had it in her to spank any number of human children. Was definitely gonna want to, when she found out what had happened here.

Yeah.

The white dust he gathered was turning into unpleasantly textured slush -- which had _also_ happened before, his cursed awareness was eager to remind him -- and he made his decision. He couldn’t bring himself to care about other monsters or a no-doubt impossible fight with a human who could just rearrange the timeline to be what they wanted it to be anyway. Not right now. Not when his normal lethargy was giving way to a much sharper, bone-deep grief and even moving seemed like a Herculean feat.

There should be a funeral, but he didn’t have the energy for it and everyone was gone anyway, snowy tracks scattering throughout the underground and away from the small, somehow more substantial footprints headed inexorably toward Waterfall.

_When a monster dies, they turn to dust. That dust is then scattered over the monster’s favorite object. In that way, some small part of their essence lives on._

He wondered what to even do with his brother’s dust. Papyrus loved so much, with all his heart. He loved his puzzle books, the story of Fluffy Bunny, the bones he used to do battle (god, _why_ hadn’t he even tried this time? because he was too good to exist in this timeline, of course), the special pot he believed made his pasta come out best. The race car bed he treasured in place of his dreams of the world above, his action figures, that pet rock that was technically Sans’s...

Just thinking about having to look at any of it made his bones ache. No, he… there’d be time to scatter what he had been able to gather, and the human wouldn’t reach the core for awhile.

He needed to take a break.

Good thing he knew a shortcut.

The workshop on the side of their house wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it put a locked door between him and what would come next. With his brother gone, that was all he wanted. Thoughts flared up in his mind (fix the machine for once, team up with Undyne or Asgore and finish this here and now, screw it just dust yourself and wait for the inevitable restart) and fizzled out just as quickly;  it all felt like too much effort. He settled down on the floor, closed his eyes, and let himself drift off for a moment.

He could visualize it. The mathematics of this blackened corpse of a timeline, the calculations that summarized it threading itself out to the inevitable conclusion.

Suffering, death, destruction.

The world unstrung and picked apart by the anomaly.

The end.

For now.

Nothing he could do, unless he felt like getting a few good licks in before it was all over.

…

Nah, too much effort.

He looked down at his hands, still cupped and starting to ache. Of course most of the dust had slipped between bones by now, but some still clung to him, holding on stubbornly until the last. He could almost hear the booming voice it used to belong to, almost see the figure of his taller brother standing over him, hands on hipbones and impatient foot tapping in disapproval. “SANS! Slacking off as usual, you inexcusable gadabout!”

 

“Yeah,” he answered the empty room. “But I’ve got a really good reason this time.”

“That’s what you always say! Is there no end to your laziness? You’ve got some nerve sitting down on the job with a human loose out there!”

Monster funerals were usually, to put it mildly, cool as heck. Papyrus deserved the best, but all Sans had to offer was himself, squatting in a room alone and not feeling up to much.

He turned his hand over, looking at the dust that almost seemed to shimmer in the low light.

_Monster dust is meant to be scattered over whatever they loved most._

"They’re clearly lost! In need of guidance!”

He bowed his head, hand pressed to his empty ribcage. It hurt. The underlying knowledge that it was all temporary didn’t make the acute loss any easier.

_That monster’s essence, living on in whatever the dust landed on._

“Someone has to do something about it!”

...maybe he should catch up with the human after all. After all, Papyrus wasn’t wrong. That kid definitely needed a lesson. He couldn’t promise him that their curriculum was exactly the same, but at least he was getting up off the floor. He couldn’t afford to be apathetic. He had a feeling Papyrus would just keep on pushing him if he tried to quit, as he always had.

“Okay, bro. You win. I’m going."


End file.
